Customer Reviews

War and Genocide: Organised Killing in Modern Society

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Martin Shaw , according to the previous reviewer - "(rightly) dismisses psychological and sociological explanations about why one group commits genocide over another". In doing so, his study has become majorly flawed when it comes to women, and sexual minorities. Shaw discards "feminist interpretations" of rape during war time, adding that "more men are killed then women", where the real 'gendricide' to war can be noted. From the experience of Albania to all war, women are raped "to humilitate menfolk", according to Shaw. This does strike a note of 'psychological explanation' but is the only one that Shaw takes into account. Homosexuals murdered by the Nazi's are briefly mentioned as well as heterosexual women, lesbians and gays serving in the military. Shaw's minority and gender "asides" are conspicuous in what they say as well as don't say. As such, read against the grain of this recent study.

Other generalizations: Sweden is referred to as an 'international' peace culture' because Shaw has adoped the myth of 'war time neutrality' here without the benefit of new research. "Left wing journalists" are presented in quotation marks to disclaim them as a group. Shaw's bias against feminism is notable. His study is an example of how 'gender studies' exclude from scrutiny notable differences between men and women. His study is also framed within a fairly heteronormative perspective.

Minority and gender representation, which Shaw eliminates in his theory of 'total war' turn out to be the areas where his study falls short. Had he spent some time in illuminating these areas then dismissing or trivializing them, his study might be a better read. Since Shaw has discarded them, the study is biased in its attempts to free itself from psychological profile - at the expense of women and minorities.

After a genocide occurs, people always ask, "How could this happen?" Martin Shaw provides an answer that is simple, insightful and chilling.

Martin Shaw's premise is that war has devolved from "total war" where the entire state (both soldiers and civilians) are at war against an enemy to "degenerative war" where both soldiers and innocent civilians of the enemy state are treated as compatants to "genocide" where innocent civilians are perceived as the enemy and treated as combatants. It is no coincidence that genocide and war go hand-in-hand. The Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge killing fields, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur... all of these atrocities occured in the midst of war. Even in Stalin's purges and Mao's "Cultural Revolution" and "Great Leap Forward" the pretext for mass-killing was a kind of civil war against perceived enemies of the state.

Shaw (rightly) dismisses psychological and sociological explanations about why one group commits genocide over another. (i.e., there was something deep in the German psyche that caused the Holocaust) Instead he treats genocide as a natural by-product of autocratic states that produce and mobilize machines for mass killing, then turn those machines against a group of unarmed civilians.

The book can be a bit repetitive at times in stating the case, but all-in-all an excellent introduction to the subject of genocide.